


The Artist Formerly Known as Yusuke

by SpringZephyr



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, References to Persona 2 and 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 10:10:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12455286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpringZephyr/pseuds/SpringZephyr
Summary: Yusuke draws a lot, sometimes offending people in the process.





	The Artist Formerly Known as Yusuke

**Author's Note:**

> This was a gift for someone I don't know very well. I thought a comedic, slightly OoC story would be safest. Also I wrote this at work and work drives me insane, so it gradually kept getting worse. 8D

“That's an amazing self-portrait, Yusuke!”

 

The other thieves rarely invited themselves over to his humble abode. Yusuke hadn't quite known how they would react to the abundance of art supplies while his cupboards remained mostly empty, but it hadn't been Makoto's “first things first” interrogation over why he had a bouquet of onions on his table. Everything after that had merely added to his confusion. Clearly, just being around him hadn't been enough to develop everyone's sensitudes for the arts.

 

“I thank you, but – ”

 

“Wow, you're right! The hair's a little bit different, but that really looks like an older you, Yusuke!”

 

“Actually, that is a commission of a man named Jun – ”

 

“There's a lot of blank space on this side of the canvas... When are you going to finish it, Yusuke?” asked Ann. “Is it hard drawing yourself in the mirror?”

 

“Oh, dude!” Ryuuji exclaimed with the vigor of an enlightened mind. “I can barely tell my right from my left in the bathroom mirror!”

 

Yusuke sighed. Artists they may not be, but at least he wasn't dealing with an entire room full of Ryuujis.

 

X

 

“Make me look beautiful,” Futaba instructed.

 

“To do anything less would be an insult to my artistic integrity. I will do nothing less than bring out your natural beauty,” Yusuke promised as he sketched the outline of a gorilla.

 

X

 

 

“I would like to show you the finished portrait now, if I may.”

 

“I'd love to – ”Ann replied enthusiastically – at least until she remembered a certain past fixation of Yusuke's, drawing her nude, and faltered.  
  


Yusuke had this weird tendency to simultaneously ease her worries and frenzy them by being such a good listener. Up until a few minutes ago, she'd been chattering mindlessly about her modeling job and the photographer's insistence that she needed to digitally modify Ann's bust to look bigger. Now that she had taken the time to actually look at Yusuke's face and noticed the flushed grimace it had twisted into, she was a little warier than before.

 

“Please don't be nude, please don't be nude, please don't be...”

 

“Hm? Ann, what are you mumbling about?”

 

“Oh, i-it's nothing!”

 

“Are you keeping your eyes closed for a reason?”

 

“My eyes aren't closed! I'm, uh, just enjoying the art in a different lighting! Woooow, very good, Yusuke!”

 

“Ann, you're closing your eyes. You can't see anything.”

 

Or if she weren't, she was staring at his sock drawer, which was surprisingly the least artistic thing in his dorm room.

 

“...Guess I can't fool you.”

 

With a sigh, Ann opened her eyes to find – a surprisingly normal drawing of herself. She must have gasped out loud or something, because not a second later she heard Yusuke asking, “Ann, what did you _think_ I was drawing?”

 

X

 

“Didn't you say you were drawing me?” Akechi asked.

 

He'd been pleasantly surprised when Yusuke had asked him to model. But to clarify, he was a teenager with long-ish brown hair, brown eyes, and often donned a peacoat. Akechi was the type of person other people liked to talk about, contemptuously referred to by some as “having won the genetic lottery” or “too damn pretty for his own good, why are girls so attracted to him? (frustrated sigh)”.

 

The figure on the paper, however, appeared to be a man in his twenties with black hair and a goofy grin. He was wearing a police uniform and holding a cabbage. Why a cabbage?

 

Yusuke stared at the drawing contemplatively. “I can barely see the difference,” he muttered after a while.

 

X

 

“Yusuke drew me like a gorrila!”

 

“I did not draw you _like_ a gorilla, I drew you _as_ a gorilla! It's an artistic interpretation of what you asked me for!”

 

“I did _not_ ask for you to draw your own stupid, primate level of intelligence!”

 

“What did Futaba ask you to draw?” Akira asked with a quiet curiosity that temporarily ended the argument. The operating word here was “temporarily”. Intuition was enough to tell him the peace wouldn't endure for long.

 

“Bwuh – wh-w-w-w-why would you wa-wanna know that?!”

 

“It was a simple self-portrait.”

 

“It was supposed to be a gift for him...” Futaba grumbled under her breath. “Make Yusuke apologize!”

 

“She's slandering my artist ambition by demanding I not to draw what I desire to draw, and not even offering compensation as penance!”

 

“But you were the one who agreed to do the drawing! And what do you mean by 'penance'?!”

 

“You sort this out,” Morganna sighed. “I'm going downstairs to beg for table scraps from customers.”

 

Eventually, Akira defused to the situation down to “Futaba, maybe Yusuke wouldn't have drawn you a picture of a gorilla if you weren't so brutally honest” and “Yusuke, that's a very nice picture of a gorilla. That's not Futaba though.”

 

Nobody left Akira's room in a good mood that night.

 

X

 

“Yusuke, no!” Makoto gasped.

 

“Yusuke, yes!” Haru goaded him cheerfully.

 

“Yusuke, what are you doing to my school photo?!” Ryuuji exclaimed at the sight of the dark haired boy drawing an eye patch and a parrot on his portrait's face in permanent marker.

 

X

 

“You said you were going to fix it! This is not fixing it!”

 

“It looks exactly like you,” Yusuke protested.

 

Futaba huffed. “All you did was take the gorilla picture and _draw headphones on it!_ ”

 

X

 

“When I asked you to draw my human form, I wasn't expecting... that,” Morgana lowered his ears and pawed at the paper pointedly. “Why did you draw me as a little kid?”

 

“Perhaps... because of your voice?” Yusuke asked.

 

“Why do _you_ sound uncertain? At any rate, if you're going to draw me at least make me look cooler. I'm pretty sure I'm cooler than a five year old.”

 

“You did ask me to draw what I thought you would look like,” Yusuke pointed out.

 

“Yeah... you're right.... What kind of five year old has this much knowledge about thievery though?”

 

“You're right. I have made a grave mistake.”

 

“Well, I wouldn't call it 'grave' – Hey, are you redrawing my picture? Can I be six feet tall and wear my phantom thieves garb in this one?”

 

Yusuke nodded. “Your fur is dark too. I imagine you would like to keep your dark hair from the last drawing, as that would make the most sense?”

 

“It's not all dark though, so maybe I dyed part of it?”

 

“And you have a prosthetic cyborg arm!”

 

“A... a what?” Morgana tilted his feline head in confusion. Unless he had the tools from a Swiss army knife installed in every finger, why would he even need something like that? And how did that make sense? “Yusuke, have you been drawing those 'doujinshi' things again?”

 

“Yes. Futaba has quite the interesting collection and Makoto recently let me borrow one of her manga. She told me not to tell anyone – oh.”

 

X

 

“You spend so much time drawing us, that I decided I would draw a picture of you,” Futaba informed Yusuke, handing him a piece of paper with a fairly pleasant look on her face.

 

The back of the paper was signed with Futaba's spindly handwriting. He had to turn it over to view the illustration on the other side.

 

“It's... it's mostly red,” he noted, trying hard not to let his disappointment show. Who was he to criticize art, after all? And if Futaba had truly put effort into this, that was all the more reason not to reflect on the crudeness and his lack of understanding. That didn't forbid him from asking questions though. “I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't comprehend – ”

 

“This will be you in the next battle if you don't stop drawing me as a gorilla. _I will let this happen to you._ ”

 


End file.
